


Anger Management

by BleedingInk



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Anger Management, F/M, Gen, Homophobia, Homophobic Slurs, John Winchester Centric Fic, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, Support Group, Swearing, Therapy, mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-19 01:54:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13694424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleedingInk/pseuds/BleedingInk
Summary: John shows up to his anger management support group looking like he had a rough Thanksgiving weekend.





	Anger Management

John arrives when the group is already pulling their chairs and setting them down. He ignores the glances being thrown at him and takes his time by the coffee maker. Raising his arms and moving too fast still hurts his ribs, but he manages to prepare himself a cup without grimacing too much. He is the last one to bring his chair to the circle and once sat, he tries to act like everybody is not staring at his black eye, his bruised knuckles and the butterfly bandage on his cheek.

“Alright, welcome, group,” Castiel begins.

He is actually the psychologist that leads the group and everybody knows that to the outside world, he is “Dr. Novak”, but in there, he insists they all call him by his first name. John believes it’s quite a cheap tactic to make them forget that he is the only one there that has never done anything that he regretted. With his deep, calmed voice and his mild mannerism, it’s hard to imagine “Dr. Novak” ever flying into a rage.

“I’m sure many things happen over this weekend to all of you,” Castiel continues. “The holidays are always a difficult time when we have to deal with a lot of frustrating and stressing things. So how did you do? Does anyone want to begin sharing?”

Every time the session begins, John is reminded of middle school, when the teacher asked a question and all the students avoided making eye contact with her. Castiel even leans forwards a little bit the way Mrs. Sands did when she was preparing to call someone’s name.

“John,” he says, and it’s pretty obvious why. He points at his own, intact face: “Do you want to tell us how this happened?”

“Not particularly,” John groans.

There are mixed reactions to his response: some people let out quiet chuckles, some roll their eyes. Castiel ignores them all and attacks again:

“John, you need to remember that progress isn’t always linear. If you had a setback this weekend, it’s best that you share it with us so we can work past it and return to the healthier path to being in control of your emotions. You were doing a lot of progress this past few months. It would be a shame if all of that went to waste.”

John grits his teeth. He doesn’t like the patronizing way Castiel has of speaking sometimes, but he can’t deny that every word he said is true.

“Well,” he sighs. “I had a stressful situation this weekend and I didn’t handle it very well.”

 

* * *

 

That past Sunday went great. John did his groceries. God, he hated doing groceries. He hated indecisive people blocking the aisles with their carts and slow cashiers and just all around having to be in a grocery store in general.

“Have a nice day!” the cashier wished him with a smile that seemed extremely forced.

John reminded himself that it wasn’t her fault, that she was probably at the end of her shift and that she had been dealing with clients all day. And in any case, she had to smile and be pleasant to keep her job. She should be pitied, not raged at. So John forced a smile too and nodded before walking away with his purchases.

And after he went home and put them away, he bought a newspaper and went to the park to feed the pigeons. It was his free day and Castiel recommended they did a soothing activity after doing another that could cause an outburst. John liked going to the park, people watch and feed the pigeons because, even though it made him look like a retired old man with nothing else to do in his life, it was easy to just breathe in and let the cooing of the birds and the rumor of faraway conversation lull him into forgetting about how bothersome experience buying groceries was.

(Castiel told them to consider things that were worth getting worked up over in a scale of one to ten, one being “mildly annoying” and ten being “homicidal rage”. John gives groceries shopping maybe a three. Two and a half on good days).

He was in the middle of doing that when his cellphone rang. Dean, his eldest, had taken him to buy a new phone for his birthday, because the tech repair guy had said that John’s old flip phone couldn’t be fixed anymore. The whole situation had been a five in John’s scale of angering things and even now this new buttonless phone that he still was getting used to was a four.

After a few failed attempts, he managed to touch the small green button right to take the call.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Dad. It’s me.”

“Sam!”

John’s day immediately brightened up, the grocery shop and slow cashiers forgotten as soon as he heard the voice of his younger son. It didn’t matter that their relationship wasn’t always the best and that they ended up butting heads more often than not, it didn’t matter than on good days their talks were paused and a little bit awkward. It was still great to hear from him no matter the circumstances.

“How are you? How you’ve been?”

“I’m good, Dad,” Sam said. His voice sounded light and cheerful, way more so than usual. “Actually, I’m more than good. Umh… Eileen’s pregnant.”

“What?”

John had heard him correctly, but he needed a second or two to process it.

“Yeah, we just found out last week,” Sam continued telling him. “We’re… we’re having a baby.”

“Oh, my God.” John put his hand over his mouth for a second or two, because he felt like if he didn’t, he was going to just start screaming out like a deranged man. “I’m gonna be a grandpa?”

“You’re going to be a grandpa!” Sam confirmed.

“This is amazing! Sammy, congratulations!”

“Thank you.” Sam chuckled and then lower his voice as if he was about to tell him a secret: “I’m actually kind of freaking out a little bit.”

“No, don’t, son. Don’t. You’re going to be great. I just know it.”

He bit his tongue short of saying “Way better than me”, but he thought it. (He doesn’t share this with the group).

“Thank you, Dad.” Sam chuckled again and made a pause. Years before, John might had asked him to hurry up and tell him what he’s thinking, but he had learnt that people hesitating before speaking was a minus one in his scale. So he waited until Sam was ready to speak again: “Actually, I’m calling because… we wanted to invite you over for Thanksgiving.”

That was even more surprising than Sam’s wife being pregnant.

“… are you sure?” John asked.

He and Sam had a better relationship than in the past, that was true, but it was held together by duct tape and bobby pins. Spending more than three days together in the same house could undo the fragile truce they had managed to achieve after so many years.

“Yeah. Dean’s coming over too. And I know, I know it hasn’t always… ended up great,” Sam said, putting it way more politely than John would have. “But… I thought maybe we could start a tradition. Of you, spending the holidays with us. And I know you hate flying and you’re not very fond of California, either, but… yeah. If you want to come.”

He finished the sentence sounding insecure and like he’s doubting his own plan now that he’d said it out loud.

“I’ll go,” John said. He didn’t even have to think about it.

“Really?”

“Yes, of course,” John insisted. “I’ll be there.”

 

* * *

 

“Wait a second,” Zachariah interrupts. He’s a businessman who usually comes to the meetings wearing suits and for what John gathers from his stories, he was forced there by his business partners for screaming at too many secretaries. “So you’re having a grandchild. That’s a good thing.”

“It’s the greatest thing that has happened to me since my own kids were born.” John nods.

“So… why is that a stressful thing?”

John looks at the ceiling and counts until ten before he answers:

“You guys know all about it. I’ve told you: how I kinda lost my mind when my wife died, how I was a drunk, how I uprooted the boys over and over every time I got kicked out of a job. I was a bad dad, I lost precious time with my sons that I’m never getting back. They have every right to hate me and not want anything to do with me and yet here’s Sam, extending an olive branch to me and giving me the opportunity of being part of my grandkid’s life. Of course I’m gonna jump at it.” He stops for a second, because the words he needs to say next almost get stuck in his throat. “And I’m terrified that I’m gonna fuck it up, because if I do… that’s it. I’m out of chances with my family.”

Castiel nods comprehensively. Then he leans down and picks something from the ground to pass from hand to hand until it reaches John: the swear jar. John groans, takes out his wallet and pushes a dollar bill into it, but he doesn’t pass it back to Castiel. He gets the feeling he’s going to swear a lot more as this story progresses.

“But that wasn’t the thing that set me off.”

 

* * *

 

The flight was terrible. The entire process of booking his flight (on a mechanic’s salary, he could only afford tourist class), packing his bags and taking a cab to the airport was a hassle, but John kept his anger firmly on a level three by reminding himself that he needed to be in his best mood by the time he got to Sam’s house because he didn’t want to fight with anybody, because there was a pregnant woman in that house and he didn’t want to stress her out. So he even smiled at the TSA people and complied with everything they asked him to do.

His level of anger jumped at a five when it was announced that the flight would be delayed because it was overbooked and the company needed time to accommodate all the passengers in other flights. By the time he finally boarded up, he was veering dangerously into a six, so as soon as he dropped in his seat, he fished his stress ball out of his bag and started squeezing it while imagining it was the face of the sales executive that thought that selling the same seat twice wouldn’t be a problem because people missed flights all the time, right? Piece of shit.

“Nervous flier?” the woman sitting next to him asked.

“Nervous everything,” John clarified.

At least they didn’t have any turbulences. (Trying to look at the bright side of things is another of Castiel’s advices).

By the time that the plane landed in California, John was irritated, exhausted and more than eager to denounce that particular airline for crimes against humanity.

But Dean was waiting for him on the other side of the baggage claims.

“Dad!” he shouted upon seeing him and opened his arms.

John pulled him in for a tight hug, letting the warm feeling of seeing him again after so long tingle inside him. He stepped back and put a hand on his eldest son’s cheek, smiling at him. He had the same freckles as Mary had.

“You look good, son.”

“I look awesome,” Dean replied simply. “Let me help you with that,” he added, picking up John’s suitcase for him.

“How’s Baby?”

“I waxed her up just for you,” Dean replied. “I’m sure she missed you too.”

John doesn’t have favorites, of course. He might have been a terrible father when the boys were growing up, but he wasn’t bad enough as to play favorites. He loves both his sons dearly and he would die for any of them without thinking it twice.

But it’s hard to admit that he doesn’t get along better with Dean than with Sam. It’s a matter of characters. Dean might remind him of his late wife on the outside, but inside, he is a lot like John. They bond over liking the same things: classic rock (anything this side of the eighties suck and anyone who doesn’t think so just doesn’t know music), classic cars, the same sense of humor.

So of course it was a treat to get on the old ’67 Impala again, with the painting shining in the California sun, put on a great song on the radio and sing along to it with the windows down like a pair of mad men. John laughed and thought how amazing it was that something as simple as this could improve his humor so drastically.

“Can’t wait for our road trip back to Kansas,” he told Dean. “One of these days, we’re gonna have to convince Sam to come along with us, like in the old days. Eileen and the baby can come too, of course.”

“Wouldn’t that be something?” Dean chuckled. But his smile faltered a little bit. He cleared his throat and looked at his shoes, the way he did when he was little and had to admit to John that he had broken something. “Uh… actually, about our road trip, dad…”

“Is there a problem?”

“No, it’s not a problem. I mean, I’m hoping it won’t be.” Dean stared at the cars on the road for a moment and John glanced at him. He reminded himself once again that he had to give time to whoever he was talking to. “I… brought someone along. Someone I’m seeing. Dating. And it’s… kind of a serious deal.”

“Really?” John asked, raising an eyebrow.

Were his sons trying to kill him with surprises that week? Dean had always been a flirt, always talking about how settling down was something Sam would do, but not him. John remembered being the same way, up until the point he met Mary. It warmed his heart to think that Dean might have found someone like that.

“Well, that’s amazing,” he said, smiling. “I can’t wait to meet her. I’m sure she’s terrific.”

“Dad…”

“What’s her name?”

Dean licked his lips nervously and then spoke very fast:

“His name is Benny.”

John pumped on the breaks so hard that every single car behind them honked at them. Some of the drivers showed them the middle finger as they drove around them, but John couldn’t bring himself to care. He needed a second or two to understand what Dean was saying.

“What?”

Dean looked embarrassed and anxious, but he still stuck his cheek in the air and spoke firmly:

“His name is Benny,” he repeated. “He’s a cook. We’ve been dating for six months and I asked him to move in with me. He said yes, but he wanted to meet my family first.”

John’s addled brain at least kept enough common sense in him to realize that they couldn’t keep standing in the middle of the street, blocking the traffic; not without a cop showing up at one moment or another and the last thing they needed right now was to get a ticket. He automatically turned the engine on again and moved the car as he tried to understand what was going on there.

“Are… are you gay?” he asked, when he could find his voice again.

“I’m… bisexual,” Dean clarified. “Means I date men and women. I happen to be dating a man right now and I happen to like him. A lot. So… I was hoping you could get along with him.”

He was trying to speak matter-of-factly, as if he was commenting on the weather or what he’d had for breakfast this morning. But John noticed the way he kept glancing at him, as if he was waiting for him to blow off.

John checked his anger level just because that was a thing he had trained himself to do almost automatically these days, but he found he was too baffled to feel anything else.

“Why’d you never tell me about this?”

“I didn’t think you’d need to know,” Dean said. He tapped his fingers on his knees and then added softly: “I didn’t know how you’d react.”

Well, now he knew. John was so stunned he couldn’t react at all.

What followed was a long, awkward silence until they parked the Impala in front of Sam’s house. Only then Dean took a deep breath and spoke again:

“Please, it’s not a big deal…”

“It’s a _huge_ deal,” John corrected him. But he couldn’t elaborate, because Dean visibly flinched.

“Can we… maybe have this conversation later?” he requested. “Can we go into the house and pretend you knew all along and it doesn’t change anything? Sam wants to have a normal, calm Thanksgiving, can we do that for him?”

John tapped his fingers on the wheel for a moment. He leaned back on the seat and nodded.

“Okay. Yes. Let’s do that.”

“Thank you,” Dean muttered before getting out of the car.

John waited a few seconds to collect his thoughts before he followed him too.

 

* * *

 

He is aware that everyone in the support group is staring at him and judging him. He wants to tell them that yes, he didn’t have the best of reactions. That yes, once again, he failed his son by not getting immediately used to the idea of him dating another man.

But what would they have done in his situation?

Before he can, though, Castiel intervenes:

“Okay. So your son came out to you and introduced you to his boyfriend. How did that make you feel?”

“How do you think?” John groans.

“Try verbalizing your emotions, John.”

John sees Charlie staring at him with a blank expression. The small redhead is in the group under judges orders because she tazered someone on a comic convention, whatever that is. She seems way too happy-go-lucky to be there, but in that moment, she seems like she’s barely holding something she wants to say back.

John mentally pictures the Wheel of Emotions that Castiel sometimes uses to get them to open up.

“Sad,” he says in the end.

Charlie huffs and crosses her arms over her chest.

“Care to elaborate?” Castiel probes John.

“Sad, because… my son is a grown ass man, you know?” John scratches his neck and takes a moment to order the words in his head before he says them. “He’s thirty-four years old and he kept this from me his entire life, even though it’s clearly something that matters to him. And I’m sad he felt he couldn’t trust me enough to tell me. Sad for me, too. It felt like I didn’t know him in that moment.”

He stops talking because the lump in his throat is growing too large. He takes a couple of deep breaths to keep himself together and looks up. He’s met with wide open, expecting eyes.

“That’s… that’s it?” Castiel asks. He frowns, confused.

“What else am I supposed to feel?” John shoots back.

Castiel has the tact not to respond to that, but the rest of the group isn’t as delicate.

“So what? Did you fight with the boyfriend?” Meg asks. She’s a young woman in her late-thirties and John can definitely imagine her tazering someone.

“Benny? No, he was very nice. He did something to the turkey’s gravy, I don’t know what, but it was so good…” John stops his rambling and looks around the room. “Wait, did you… did you think me losing it had something to do with Dean coming out?”

“That… seemed the logical way the story’s going,” Castiel points out.

John figures he can’t blame them.

“Well… it kind of did.”

 

* * *

 

He woke up from his turkey induced coma around noon, feeling pretty great actually. The previous night had been nothing but cordial chatter and excellent food and the rest of the weekend seemed posed to continue that trend: just watching TV or playing board games. Something boring and mind-numbing, just what the doctor ordered.

He found Benny on the hallway on the way to the bathroom.

“Mr. Winchester,” Benny said, smiling through his beer. “How did you sleep?”

John still wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that his son was into burly, hairy men who spoke with very pronounced Southern drawls. But he could appreciate Benny being so polite.

“Good, good. Your gravy, it was delicious.”

“Thank you. I was actually hoping to impress you,” Benny confessed, rubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t have a lot of experience with this all… meeting the family thing.”

John could also appreciate the honesty.

“Well, Dean seems happy with you,” he concluded. And honestly, that was the only thing he really needed to know.

“I try. I try to make him happy.” Benny nodded.

“Yeah, you better. Because, you should know, I have an extensive military background, easy access to firearms and a friend that has a boat that could reach international waters very quickly,” John added. He was only half-joking, but Benny smiled nonetheless.

“I appreciate the warning, sir.”

John grinned at him and patted him on the shoulder.

“And you can call me John. We’re all adults here.”

So the second day at Sam’s house was going well. They may even managed to survive that weekend in one piece. John was feeling good about himself as he sat down on the kitchen’s table, reading the newspaper and watching Eileen and Sam washing the dishes that they had left out the night before. They worked in very comfortable silence until Eileen reached out to touch Sam’s arm and lifted her hands in a series of signs that John couldn’t understand. He noticed Eileen looked a bit worried, though.

“Is everything okay?” he asked, looking at them over the edge of his newspaper.

“Yes, Dad, don’t worry,” Sam told him. “Eileen’s just telling me she forgot to pick up the groceries she ordered from the store. I’m gonna have to go get that before it gets dark… and before Black Friday shoppers all head home.”

John’s eye twitched at the word “groceries”, but he was still feeling well enough that he didn’t even stop to think when he said:

“Why don’t you let me do that for you?”

“Dad, you hate groceries,” Sam pointed out, with a soft chuckle, as if he thought John was making a joke.

“With a passion,” John agreed. “But if she already ordered them, I just have to pick them up, put them in the car and bring them here. Won’t take long.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” he stood up and turned his face to Eileen so she could read his lips. “I’ll do it.”

Eileen’s face lit up with a smile.

“Alright. Thank you, John.”

“You’re… how do you sign…?”

“Oh, like this,” Sam said, moving his hand forwards: “ _You’re welcome._ ”

John repeated the gesture somewhat clumsily, but it must have been good enough for Eileen, because she laughed and thanked him again.

“Oh, and you have to teach me how to order those things online when I come back,” John added, as he left the kitchen and headed out for the door.

“You also hate the Internet!” Sam pointed out.

John didn’t even attempt to deny it as he headed towards the living room. Dean and Benny were on the couch, watching something on the TV, sitting side by side and holding hands. Dean barely raised his eyes at him.

“I need Baby’s keys,” John told him and informed him of the grocery situation.

“Can’t they bring it here?” Dean suggested.

“It’s Black Friday, _chér_. They’re probably swamped,” Benny pointed out. He reached for the remote and turned off whatever they were watching. “Why don’t we go too?”

“You boys don’t have to…” John started, but Benny interrupted him.

“We’ll keep you company in the line and help you carry the stuff. Won’t be a problem.”

“You know, you trying to endear yourself to my dad by insinuating he’s an old man who can’t carry a bunch of groceries might not be the wisest strategy,” Dean said.

“Oh, don’t worry Dean. I already had the talk with him,” John replied. “But yeah, if you boys want to come, I don’t see why not.”

He would live to regret those words. Maybe if Dean and Benny hadn’t come… but it wasn’t their fault. They had the right to be out in public, to laugh at John when he saw how long the line was and started squeezing his stress ball, they had the right to stand around holding hands and laughing and just… existing. They had the right to do that.

So what happened next, it was entirely John’s fault. John’s and that white-haired guy that spotted them in the parking lot after they’d finished loading up Baby.

John had already walked around the Impala to get in the driver’s seat. He wasn’t sure what Dean and Benny did in that moment, but they must have done something that gave them away as a couple, because suddenly, the white-haired guy was in their faces, snarling at them and shouting:

“That’s indecent! There are children here! Aren’t you ashamed of that disgusting display?”

“What did you say, dude?” Dean asked, taking a step forwards.

“Dean, no. It’s not worth it,” Benny said, holding his boyfriend back. “We’re leaving.”

“Yeah, you better leave, you filthy faggots! You’re the scum of the earth! You’re gonna rot in…!”

The punch probably surprised the guy more than it hurt him. It had been a graceless punch, all fury and no technique and not enough force to cause any real damage when it impacted with his cheek. It unbalanced him, but it didn’t make it drop to his knees.

But John didn’t care about that. There was much more where that had come from. His anger had rose up to eleven and he was staring at the guy ready to let it all out on him.

“Wanna say that about my son again, motherfucker?!”

 

* * *

 

“So you beat up the homophobe?” Charlie asks, her eyes opening wide. For some reason, she didn’t look scandalized, but… delighted.

“I mean… he managed to land a few hits too,” John says, pointing at his black eye. “But, yes, essentially. A couple of employees and Dean and Benny broke us up. Sam showed up at the ER all lawyery like and I don’t know how, but he convinced the guy not to press charges.” He sighs and leans back on his chair. “And that’s what happened.”

He goes quiet as all eyes fall on him. He knows they’re expecting some sort of reflection or conclusion or something about the Wheel of Emotion, but John has nothing to offer. He simply sits there, with his arms over his chest and waits for someone else to say anything.

Castiel is, of course, the first one to speak.

“John, I can’t condone your fighting…”

“What? Did you hear the vile shit the other guy was saying?” Charlie pointes out.

“Even so–” Castiel gestures at John to pass the swear jar to Charlie, “– and while I understand that anger was perfectly justified in this case, the actions taken because of that anger were excessive.”

“Come on, Cas, does he really have to lose a star over this?” Meg asks.

“Circumstances were extraordinary in this case,” Zachariah agrees.

The other members nod their support as well. Castiel looks at all of them, clearly outnumbered.

“We will consider not removing the star, if John did something to make amends for his actions afterwards,” he determines.

John shifts in his chair. He figures he could lie about what he did next, but part of the point of the support group was that they had to be honest.

“Sam got the guy’s number. Alistair Something, I don’t know. I guess I could call him and apologize for beating the shit out of him…”

“That would be a start,” Castiel agrees, and signals the Charlie to pass the swear jar back to John.

“… but I’m not gonna do that, because I’m not sorry,” John continues. “I’m just not. Hell, if I ever met that guy again, I hope I have a baseball bat with me to bash his hateful head. I would beat anyone who says that about my son. About both my sons. Due to some miracle – because God knows I can’t take credit for that – they both turned out great people, and I’m proud of them. And some little bitch comes up to them and tells them they’ll go to hell for their choices?” He shakes his head just to accentuate how furious he is at the very idea. “No. I’m not gonna let that stand.”

The silence in the group is tense now, eyes going from John to Castiel and back to John again. Finally, John lets out a deep sigh and lowers his head.

“I did apologize to Sam, though.”

 

* * *

 

“Okay, Dad. Let me know if you need more ice.”

Sam got up to leave the living room and John stared at the back of his head for a second or two. He was in a lot of pain and still shaken by the fight, but he knew it was now or never.

“Sammy,” he called him.

Sam turned around with an unreadable expression.

“Yes, Dad?”

“I’m sorry. I know you wanted this weekend to be normal and you didn't want to stress Eileen out…”

“Dad…”

“… and I fucked it up. Like I always do.”

“Dad,” Sam interrupted him. “It doesn’t matter. Benny told me what that guy was saying. Shit, if I had been there, I’d probably have jumped in too.”

“Really?” John asked, surprised by that revelation.

Sam smiled at him as he brought a chair near the couch where John was resting. There was something of Mary’s gentleness in him too. John was surprised he had never noticed it before.

“Absolutely. And perhaps you wouldn’t have been beaten so badly.”

John threw his head back, and though his ribs still hurt a lot, he let out a long belly laugh.

 

* * *

 

Castiel looks at all the members of the group, one by one. He clearly hasn’t had to deal with a lot of situations in which beating someone else in anger was so easily forgiven by people who were working every day not to do that.

“John, I don’t think you did the right thing, turning to violence,” he concludes. “But I do think you were right to defend your son. Earlier, you said that you were a bad father and that you were afraid that your past actions might lead you to lose your family. I think the fact that you’re here, that you’re trying to change and accept your sons and their significant others, shows that you’re a good person. And perhaps… the love you feel for them, and for your future grandkid, is exactly what you need to keep working on your flaws and continue to strive to be better. And I think that is the most positive thing you have and as long as you don’t lose that, I do believe that you can be better.”

John feels the almost urgent need to say something funny or witty, but again the lump in his throat makes it difficult to speak up.

“Thank you,” he manages to croak in the end.

The entire group breaks into applause and they all pretend not to notice when John quickly wipes his eyes with the back of his hand.

“Alright,” Castiel says, looking around. “Who else wants to share?”

**Author's Note:**

> John Winchester doesn't deserve the shit that fandom puts on him. FIGHT ME.


End file.
